


Mort

by sadsparties



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2133762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadsparties/pseuds/sadsparties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre lives his life surrounded by Death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mort

Death first meets Combeferre when he is seven years old. The ceiling is low, the light, dim and oppressing. The boy Combeferre is crumpled outside the sick room as his mother sheds silent tears. The physician opens the door. Death comes when he makes his exit.

Monsieur Combeferre surrenders with the eagerness of a man kept long waiting. His soul leaves with a gentle touch, and Death takes his rough-fingered hand as he leads him out of Life. As they pass the old door, the boy Combeferre perks up his head. Death barely spares him a glance, but in that glance, their eyes meet, and from then on, Death remembers.

It is some years before Death meets him again. The boy Combeferre is no more, though he has taken up his father’s name without the honorific. Death surrounds Combeferre in his rounds, but he is never there for Combeferre himself. Souls reach out from all directions, and Death feels an endless tugging at the back of his neck as lives bleed out of bodies.

Some souls are not ready, and Combeferre stands vigil as Death waits — red hands staunching a punctured abdomen, white knuckles covering a desperate grip. Death stands at the side and ponders the boy that is no more.

Death is there when a four-year old comes in with a fever. Combeferre tries and tries, but Combeferre does not know. In his well-concealed guilt, Combeferre braves the dissection hall once more, and it is there that he sees the flakes of plaster the boy had eaten in his hunger.

Combeferre goes home, he sits on the bed, and his thoughts stray to the lancet on the mantel.

It is a few months more before Death sees Combeferre again. The ceiling is low, the light, dim and oppressing. Combeferre lies asleep on the bed, the sheets around him rising and falling with the rhythm of his breath. The bandage on his crown is red, the pulse on his wrist, weak.

Combeferre opens his eyes as if it was any other day. He sits up with the slowness of a man in a dream. His expression is serene, ready, and he raises his left hand with the willingness of someone kept long waiting. Death reaches to take it. Something stirs.

Enjolras mutters in his sleep — bits of Latin interspersed with conversations from the past. His words are unimportant, but his tightened grip saves a life. Combeferre considers him hunched at his bedside, and his gaze fleets to Courfeyrac on the armchair. A moment passes; the expression on his face does not change. Instead, he lies down on the bed and closes his eyes once more. In Enjolras’s grip, a hand squeezes back.

Death takes his leave as he wakes.

It is some weeks more before Death finally takes Combeferre. Smoke obstructs the light, but Death does not need the sun to do what he does. Rebels and guards reach for his arms, some silent, some with a whimper, some with a scream. Death takes them all with the gentleness of a parent carrying their firstborn.

Death knows he is here. With every slight tug at his neck flickering away, he knows Combeferre is also at work. He wonders if Combeferre will resist, if he will struggle as he did for others to remain in Life.

Death stands amidst the carnage and waits. He waits for a guard to take his final breath. He waits for a man to lift him to safety. He waits as the man’s chest shudders with the thrust of three sharp blades. Death feels a tug in his neck, this time familiar and long-seeking. He steps forward to make one last appearance to the boy that is no more. Combeferre raises his gaze to the sky, and in his eyes, there is nothing but recognition.

Death catches his soul as his body crumples to the ground. He has never carried anything so light.

_“I have a rendezvous with Death_  
At some disputed barricade,  
When Spring comes back with rustling shade…”  
-Alan Seeger 

**Author's Note:**

> -Death, the character, is inspired by “The Book Thief”.  
> -The concept of remaining in Life and going into Death, as if they were places, is taken from “The Abhorsen Trilogy”.


End file.
